The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1887-06-02
4 PERSEvERiNG SCIENTIST.
A Series Of Careful and Successful Ex-
periments Extending Over u Period
of Tcu Wanna

A Series of Careful and Successful Ex-
periments Extending Over u Period
OF Ten Years.
Rev. DIR. Dallinger, president of the
Royal Microscopic society, recently de-
livered an address in which he describeT
series of experiments which he had
conducted for nearly ten patient and
faithful years. His project was to place
and keep under his lens several varie-
ties of those minute monads which are
necessarily multiplying by assure or di-
vision, and which are nearly at the bot
tom of animated nature.
The generation of these creatures
succeed each other about every tour
minutes; SO that in the course of an hour
he can view the passage of fourteen or
fifteen generations, which would an
swer to something like $50 years of hui
man history, while day of monadic
existence would represent moro than
10000 of our years. These monads
live in water. And by connecting the
drop that serves them for a habitable
and roomy ocean with an ingenious APP
paratus the temperature of this drop
can be either kept constant or raised
very slowly and with absolutely steady
precision. To carry out SO very delicate
an investigation, however, it would
have to be prolonged for months, and
even years. in order to initiate the i'm
mense delberation with which nature
herself accomplishes every substantial
change in her highest productions.
Night and day, winter and summer, the
patient gaze must be kept fixed on
those mereSt specks of silvery life,
which had to be nursed into new condi-
tions of existence. The slightest acct
dent to the apparatus might in one mo-
ment render the whole experiment void,
and leave the drop of water rs lifeless
as these islands would be if another
glacial period suddenly arrived.
The only reward, on the other hand,
tor successful and almost Uncomfortable
perseverance would be the discovery of
truth and the reinforcement of OAR
wins generalization. But for the sake
of these, which always satisfy the noble
ardor of science, DR.. Dallinger has Civ
en- as many years of his fc as was spent
by the Greeks in the siege of Troy, and
has apparently won scientific victory
the value OF which is as signal as his in
genuity and devotion are admirable.
We will endeavor very briefly to de-
scribe the method and the outcome of
his most remarkable experiments. The
groud OF microscopic monads were put
under the lens in a well-fitted water
cell at their usual temperature of 60 de-
grees Fahrenheit, the apartment, the
apparatus, and all around being careful
ly kept in precise unison. The doctor
then spent the first four months of his
observation time after time by stages
less than one sixth of Il degree until
his new swarm of protocol had reached
the new and advanced reading OF 20
degrees Fahrenheit
The change, nevertheless, had no
more disturbed them than that Expert
enced by q British fam ~ when it MI
CRATES from London to Cape Town; the
life history of each group remaining
unaltered; they moved, gyratcd, fed.
and split themselves into new indvidu-
ais in just the same manner and within
much the same periods as before. When,
however, three more degrees had been
added to the 20, the nonads showed
signs of being decidedly Inconvenience.
They were neither rs lively nor as pro-
productive as formerly; yet. by keeping
them exactly at this range during two
quiet months, they regained their for
mer vigor, and might be compared to
emgrants who had become seasoned by
surviving the first hot spell in tropi-
cal country. They could now stand l.
| by gradual steps of increase-the en-
| HANGED heat of Is degrees, which was
reached at the commencement of the
! twelfth month.
Yet here, again, long pause was
found to be necessary; the new genera
tons of those silver specks of life I'M
der the glass were not all alike strong
enough to live and thrive. What
answers to sunstroke and fever with
us had caused vacant spaces to appear
i'll the water-drop, and it was only when
the monads showed themselves once
more lively and prolific by Il long era
of repose that the careful doctor adj
ministered a further dose of caloric.
|
thus slowly and unweariedly proceed
in the same course, augmenting the
heat of their surrounding element now
and then by slow and slight additions,
pausing afterward for months to give
the minute creatures time to aocommo-
date themselves when s gns were visi-
BILE that they were under difficulties,
and always going forward to new trials
of endurance when they had recovered.
In this manner, after all those years.
DR.. Dallinger brought his small
patients to the astonishing range of
157 degrees Fahrenheit, at which the
latest generation appeared "as jolly as
sand boys"
1t is not possible to say how much
farther their tiny constitutions could
have been trained to defy increasing
warmth, because the research was at
this point accdently terminated; but it
will be seen that the doctor had
brought the little people of his drop
world to sustain heat nearly 100 de-
grees higher than the tiourshing point
of their ancestors, and species of which,
if taken at the beginning, would have
been completely and instantaneously
killed in water OF 40 degrees.
When we have added that these
minute salamanders persisted directly
they were put back into their ancestral
medium of 65 degrees it will be mani
fest that the indefatigable doctor had
by the magic of sc ence, effected g
miracle of nature. London Telegraph.
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